Officials from various public institutions, civil society and private sector are undertaking a two-week training programme in gender economic policy management.

The training, taking place at the University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics, was jointly organised by the Centre of Gender Studies at UR’s College of Arts and Social Sciences and the African Institute of Economic Development and Planning (IDEP).

The training runs from August 10 through August 21.

Prof Herbert Robinson, the acting director for IDEP, said the training seeks to enable officials to incorporate gender dimensions into their economic planning.

"We have realised that gender is at the heart of everything we do, and we cannot develop in the presence of any discrimination against women. We want gender to be institutionalised and decentralised in all spheres of life,” he said.

Judith Kazaire, the advisor to the Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, said the training would enable participants to translate what they learned into actions.

Participants will be equipped with skills on how to set strategies to enhance gender equality within their respect institutions, which will enable us, as a country, to arrive at our dreams to achieve gender equality, she said.

Dr Jolly Rubagiza, the director of the Centre of Gender Studies at UR, said the training will help them overcome the problem of inadequate capacity within institutions and enhance gender equality.

"Studies have shown that the high political commitment to gender equality accompanied by different attempts to advance women’s rights are hampered by inadequate capacity within public institutions,” she said.

"The gap in capacity to address gender issues has remained one of the major hindrances to effective gender mainstreaming and gender equality promotion. It has also been realised that institutional reforms and high staff turnover has made gender equality unattainable, hence the need to do mass mobilisation in different institutions to bridge gender gaps,” Dr Rubagiza explained.

Sifa Seraphine, who works with Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), said the training would help them better understand the role of gender equality in development.

She said, "We always think about gender in terms of governance, but the training will enable us to look at how to incorporate gender within the economic sector since you cannot really develop economically when a part of the population is not involved.”

Participants will learn about gender and economics, gender responsive policy analysis, unpaid care work, gender-data and indices, employment and labour markets, gender and poverty, gender and macroeconomics, gender and trade, gender and access to finance, and public finance and gender-responsive budgeting.

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